Open Bug 1537561 Opened 5 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Display of search field on private newtab should track regular newtab

Categories

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, enhancement, P3)

66 Branch
enhancement

Tracking

()

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: rhpuckett3, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

Details

(Keywords: uiwanted)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0

Steps to reproduce:

Opened a private newtab page, noticed the new search field.

Actual results:

Display of search field on updated private browsing newtab page controlled by browser.privatebrowsing.searchUI

Expected results:

Wouldn't it be more consistent for display of the search field on the private browsing Newtab page to track the settings for the regular Newtab page, specifically:

browser.newtabpage.enabled
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.enabled
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSearch

For example, I have have my Home and Newtab pages set to "Blank" and have unselected all the Firefox Home Content items, as I want a clean experience (I know this is redundant when using Blank). I would prefer/expect the same private browsing experience.

Also, why would it be desirable for the search field (on either Newtab page) hand things off to the URL bar (browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar)? It seems distracting to start typing in a page field and have the focus shift to the URL bar, especially in the case where searching from the URL bar disabled. Is it simply because Chrome does this?

Thanks! - Rick

Component: Untriaged → Activity Streams: Newtab
Flags: needinfo?(abenson)
Keywords: uiwanted
Has STR: --- → yes
Type: defect → enhancement
Priority: -- → P3
Component: Activity Streams: Newtab → New Tab Page

Now that, as of Firefox 69, you've removed the preference "browser.privatebrowsing.searchUI" and forced everyone to see a search bar on the private mode newtab page I'd like to note (again) that while this search bar hands things off to the "Awesomebar", like the search bar on the regular newtab page does (by default), there's apparently no way to disable this behavior, like on the regular newtab page -- using the preference "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar".

Unless preferences already exist, that I haven't found, I'd like to recommend two things to improve consistency.

(1) Either (a) add a preference to control the private mode newtab page search bar hand-off behavior, or (b) have it honor the value of the existing preference for the regular newtab page search bar (referenced above).

(2) Either (a) add a preference show/hide the search bar on the private mode newtab page, or (b) have it honor the value of the existing preference to show/hide the search bar on regular newtab page.

I'd also like to offer that I'll never use either of these search bars (so don't really want to see them) and if I did, I would find this behavior of handing things off to the "Awesomebar" and switching the focus, hiding the search box, etc... hugely distracting and annoying.

Thanks!

  • Rick
Severity: normal → S3
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